...“Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.” is one of the many influential quotes Elie Wiesel has stated. Elie Wiesel is a nobel peace prize winner and has written dozens of fiction and nonfiction, addressing and crusaded against abuse and intolerance around the world inspired by his dreadful times in the Holocaust, including “Night”. In the book, Elie was only 15 when he and his family were taken and separated in Auschwitz because they were Jews. Throughout Auschwitz Elie experiences many horrid events that forever changed and shaped him into who he is today. and In the novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel, the main character, Elie, was effected by the events in the book because he lost his faith, gave up on humanity, and was physiological changed. Throughout Elie’s experiences during his time spent at Auschwitz, he started to lose his faith in God. Elie started to rebel and question God. Elie Wiesel stated in the text “Why, but why would I bless him? Every fiber in me rebelled” (Page 67). Elie clearly had lost his faith. The thought of rebelling occurred after so many people died having no power. “He caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves?...Kept six crematoria working day and night… had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many factories of death?” Elie also implies on page 67. Elie had heart-provoking thoughts occuring on how people could never worship the Lord and believe...
Words: 959 - Pages: 4
...eyes if viewed the right way. For many people, a life of joy and happiness may be seen, but unfortunately for even more people, a life of sorrow and despair can be seen all too easily. In Elie Wiesel’s Night, lives filled with sorrow, despair, and darkness seem to surround Elie, and swallow him up in the process. The people placed in...
Words: 782 - Pages: 4
...I believe that the story “Night” shows us a multitude of angles on which people lived during the holocaust. Though I do not belive that in these times that human kindness prevailed, often prisoners would kill for food or drink, and many people turned a blind eye to the actions in Germany. The history of the world is plagued by mankind’s inability to settle for what they have and who they are. Wars have been fought over religion, tradition, territory, and in this case, the idea that one race is superior to another. World War II was a horrible time in the world. The First World War was “the war to end all wars” and yet chaos spread over Europe. Elie Wiesel’s story, Night, is no exception. Elie was a Jewish prisoner who escaped the Nazi death camps. Night redefines what a common theme of man’s inhumanity to man. This theme is shown through the murder of a young boy, Elie’s belief in God, and Elie’s self-worth. The first display of Nazi inhumanity is the murder of a young child. An man and the boy (his assistant) were accused of blowing up a power plant on the camp. The man and boy were tortured and questioned and refused to give any information about the incident to the Nazi soldiers. The boy was described as “having the face of a sad angel” and was sentenced to be hanged. Everyone at the camp liked him and the SS officer in charge of the hanging refused his job and was replaced. The child was so light he hung for half and hour before actually...
Words: 880 - Pages: 4
...The sparkle that once gleamed in my father’s eyes had transformed into a black endless pits of despair. Every ounce of fat and strength had fled the once lively body as my father slowly approached death. His eyes sealed shut and his breathing became labored as officers continually beat him to death. Life at concentration camps were a living hell. Elie Wiesel describes these horrific events through his marvelous biography, Night. As a young Jewish boy, Wiesel was taken from his lifelong home and dumped into the Aushwitz concentration camp. Later in Wiesel’s journey, he was transported to the Buchenwald work camp. Elie Wiesel experienced indescribable terror as he saw the worth of his life be downgraded to absolutely nothing. The Jews...
Words: 388 - Pages: 2
...Billy Lynch Ms. Pound English II PreAP/Block 7 14 May 2018 Rhetorical Analysis;“Elie Wiesel’s Acceptance Speech for the Nobel Peace Prize” Author and human rights activist Elie Wiesel, in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, discusses the nature of human injustice and its impact on his life and humanity as a whole. He adopts a forthright and heartfelt tone throughout his speech in order to gain support from his audience. Wiesel's purpose is to convince the audience to unite against injustice and human rights violations. In the beginning of the speech, Wiesel’s intention is to remind the audience of the scale and inhumanity of the Jewish genocide and to establish his own personal experiences with it. When presented with the Nobel Peace Prize, Wiesel asks a hypophora “do I have the right to accept this great honor on their behalf? I do not”. He includes this in order to establish a sense of humility with his audience so the case he presents is much more convincing to them. This...
Words: 698 - Pages: 3
...Elie Wiesel’s Loss of Innocence There comes a time in one’s life where a tragic event results in the loss of innocence and an increase in knowledge. Unfortunately this is one of life’s few promises. Some experience this ablution a lot sooner than they should. In children who survived the holocaust in concentration camps, their innocence was taken as soon as their ordinary everyday life was imposed upon by the Nazis. In Elie Wiesel’s book Night, he describes himself as an innocent teenager, a child whose innocence was taken from him as the result of the nefariousness performed by the Nazis in World War Two. Elie and his family were transported to Birkenau where his family was torn apart, leaving him with his father, his sisters and his mother. Once they were separated, he began to slowly lose his innocence. Towards the end of 1941, in the small village of Sighet, Hungary, twelve-year-old Elie Wiesel spent most of his time studying the Talmud. Elie was one of four children born to his mother and father. Hilda was the eldest, then Bea, he was the third, and Tzipora was the youngest. The two eldest sisters helped the parents run the family store while Elie stayed home to study. Elie was very passionate about the theology of his religion, Judaism. He studied Talmud by day and by night he would go to the synagogue to pray. One of his main interests was Kabbalah which is an aspect of Jewish mysticism. Elie asked his father to find him a master to guide him in his...
Words: 2010 - Pages: 9
...event had. Elie Wiesel -- now a Nobel-Prize winning author, humanities professor, and Judaic studies professor at schools such as NYU, Boston University, and City University. Wiesel resided in Romania during the Holocaust and was sent to Auschwitz in Poland. Luckily, he and two of his sisters survived this traumatic experience, but, they will forever have the malicious, knavish, and despicable memories forever. Holden Caulfield, the main character of The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, does not reveal much information about...
Words: 1151 - Pages: 5
...- Describe and analyze Elie Wiesel’s changing view of god throughout the memoir and how it affected his identity. Explain three specific examples of this transformation from Elies experience beginning in sighet to his liberation at Buchenwald. NIGHT As humans we all have certain characteristics that define us. What we look like, what we do, what music we listen to, and even our religious beliefs. All of these make up our identity. Sometimes we feel like our identity is altered because of an event that has occurred. It may be positive or negative, for example if we start doubting our faith it changes our beliefs and our beliefs are a big part of who we are. In the book night Elie Wiesel starts off with an influential belief in God. Elie experiences many situations that change the way he views God slowly transforming his identity as he continues to go through many atrocities in the concentration camps. For instance, when Elie first arrived at the camp he immediately starts doubting God as he asks himself “Why should I bless his name? What had I to thank him for? (page 42) At this point in time Elie was...
Words: 741 - Pages: 3
...course of their entire life. Adolph Hitler was a German man who believed his race should rule over all other races. Blue eyes and blonde hair is what kept a person safe in the 1940’s. Hitler used the power of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazis) and the strength of the paramilitary organization Schutzstaffel (SS) to establish himself as dictator of Germany. He was a very charismatic man, which was beneficial to his goal to have people support his desire to rid Germany of all “undesirable” people. Under his direction and with the aid of his followers, Hitler was successful in “exterminating” millions of non-Germans and non-Christians in a dark segment of history called the Holocaust. Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, Elie Wiesel’s Night, and Gerda Weissmann’s recollections in One Survivor Remembers center around events which took place before and during World War II. These three titles observe how the human spirit is able to respond to unimaginable horrors and unspeakable situations with an indomitable inner strength, enduring hope, and creative defenses. Even in the worst circumstances, the human spirit will not surrender. In the 1940 time era, a person who was not German or Christian was tortured in many devastating and heart-wrenching ways. Slowly, everything was taken from these people, particularly the Jews. Initially, those who did not match the “perfect” identity were forced from their homes with a small amount of personal documents and other belongings and...
Words: 1744 - Pages: 7
...A Wave of Human Spirit The memoir, Night by Elie Wiesel, revealed how those who doubt or question God, as does the author, and those who have not doubted, never did lose their belief in God. As long as they keep the faith within oneself, an individual like Elie Wiesel who had experienced such adversities in life may become stronger to be able to get through the situation. A Wave of Human Spirit The Holocaust presented a call to people everywhere to reevaluate the role of God in their lives. The pain and suffering that we know took place is in dark contrast to what we would have thought possible in the presence of our God, and anyone who comes in contact with these horrors will be forever shaken in his present faith. Some have reacted with anger toward God, others with denial. Still others reacted with mistrust of all that God had meant before. But by asking questions, some have grown to learn that God never did things the way people expect Him to, and that fact becomes the cornerstone of the new start to their theology. God does not answer questions unless they suit His purposes. This is what we have learned from Auschwitz and from the writings of Elie Wiesel. We must continue to ask questions, continue to challenge God, until, one day, He Himself will give us the answers. And until then we should never feel so secure in faith as to think that Auschwitz could never happen again. We must make certain, through our actions, which it will never happen again. A Wave of Human...
Words: 1292 - Pages: 6
...the test. Making decisions and choices in a life or death situation requires one to adapt in order to survive. In the book Night written by Elie Wiesel, he is faced with choices and forced to make changes in order to survive his time in Auschwitz. Wiesel was clever, quick thinking, and decisive which eventually made the difference between surviving or dying. Wiesel’s father is older, and not as strong as he is. He has to care not only for himself, but also for his father, while making choices for both of them that can change their fate. Wiesel says “With only one desire: to eat.” (Night, 113). After his father passes, he realizes that he has to shut out the thoughts of his father and focus on food. Food is key to his way of survival although Wiesel also points out that the fixation of food often led to death too. At one point, a boy kills his father for a few crumbs of bread and in turn, someone kills the boy for the same scrap. Wiesel had to readjust his mindset and adapt to the horrid situation he was thrown into in order to make it out alive. “The instincts of self-preservation….had all deserted us…” (Night, 36) Wiesel’s tragic story shows how the basic needs and wants we experience on a daily basis are no longer possible in these horrific, distressful situations. At one point he longs to sleep, but “...I knew that to sleep meant to die.” (Night, 89) He is consumed with self preservation and in order to accomplish this he must adapt to the situation in which he is thrown...
Words: 1034 - Pages: 5
...hardships, insults; humans live to suffer. Elie Wiesel is an American Romanian-born Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor, who tells of his horrific tale in the novel, “Night.” Throughout the novel, Wiesel tells a journalistic story about suffering and death as he endures dreadful experiences in Nazi death camps. At one point in the story, Wiesel compares himself to Job, a character of the Bible who he feels he can relate to. At first, Wiesel fights the urge to reject God in his suffering which is an uncommon action when all hope is gone. Firstly, within the pages of the Bible reads a narrative story called, “The Book of Job.” In Job, there is a man who God allows to be directly attacked by Satan. He is an illustration of devotion as he is stripped of everything yet he remains devoted to God. By allowing Satan to attack Job, God testifies his faithfulness to him. Job was abundantly blessed by God. He had a wonderful family, a huge house, plenty of animals, and food on the table. Through...
Words: 682 - Pages: 3
...Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and author of “Night”, was deported along with his family to an extermination camp in 1944 where they endured hardships ranging from slavery to starvation. On April 12, 1999, in Washington, D.C., Wiesel presents his speech, “The Perils of Indifference” to President Clinton, his First Lady, White House Officials, and the American people. Referring to the tragic events of the twentieth century, Wiesel lectures on the threat that “indifference” poses, and discusses his hopes for a better future. Leading the speech, the author begins with an anecdote of his childhood, the liberation of Buchenwald. He mentioned the memories of the american soldier’s compassion and rage towards the victim’s situation during the...
Words: 835 - Pages: 4
...___________________________ LIVING HISTORY Hillary Rodham Clinton Simon & Schuster New York • London • Toronto • Sydney • Singapore To my parents, my husband, my daughter and all the good souls around the world whose inspiration, prayers, support and love blessed my heart and sustained me in the years of living history. AUTHOR’S NOTE In 1959, I wrote my autobiography for an assignment in sixth grade. In twenty-nine pages, most half-filled with earnest scrawl, I described my parents, brothers, pets, house, hobbies, school, sports and plans for the future. Forty-two years later, I began writing another memoir, this one about the eight years I spent in the White House living history with Bill Clinton. I quickly realized that I couldn’t explain my life as First Lady without going back to the beginning―how I became the woman I was that first day I walked into the White House on January 20, 1993, to take on a new role and experiences that would test and transform me in unexpected ways. By the time I crossed the threshold of the White House, I had been shaped by my family upbringing, education, religious faith and all that I had learned before―as the daughter of a staunch conservative father and a more liberal mother, a student activist, an advocate for children, a lawyer, Bill’s wife and Chelsea’s mom. For each chapter, there were more ideas I wanted to discuss than space allowed; more people to include than could be named; more places visited than could be described...
Words: 217937 - Pages: 872
